Wildly popular with young people for their dizzying array of flavours, including apple, watermelon and cola, the time is up for disposable e-cigarettes in Belgium \u2014 the first EU country to ban them.<\/p>\n
From January 1, it will be forbidden to sell single-use vapes in Belgium, a bid to protect young people\u2019s health as part of a national anti-tobacco plan.<\/p>\n
The European Union aims to achieve a tobacco-free generation by 2040, reducing the 27-country bloc\u2019s smoking population from around 25 per cent now to less than five per cent of the total.<\/p>\n
Some EU countries plan to bring that deadline forward.<\/p>\n
Vapes are often promoted as less harmful than smoking traditional tobacco products.<\/p>\n
They attract younger users with their colourful packaging, the promise of mouth-watering flavours, and the advantage of avoiding that nasty smoke smell on fingers.<\/p>\n
But since e-cigarettes still contain nicotine, which is highly addictive, critics fear they could be a potential stepping stone to more traditional tobacco products.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is that young people start using vapes without always knowing their nicotine content, and nicotine is addictive,\u201d said Nora Melard, spokeswoman for the Alliance for a Tobacco-Free Society in Belgium.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have young people saying they wake up at night to take a puff,\u201d she told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very worrying.\u201d Belgium boasts it has reacted quickly to the dangers posed by disposable e-cigarettes, which hit the market more than five years ago.<\/p>\n
In 2021, the federal government submitted a proposal to the European Commission, the EU\u2019s executive arm, to ban single-use vapes.<\/p>\n
The commission, which must give its approval for any sales ban, accorded a green light to Belgium in March 2024, paving the way for a national law to enter into force.<\/p>\n
France has obtained EU acceptance for a similar ban.<\/p>\n
Once enacted, the French law will ban the production, sale and free offer of vapes, with a fine of 100,000 euros ($104,000) for any violations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wildly popular with young people for their dizzying array of flavours, including apple, watermelon and cola, the time is up for disposable e-cigarettes in Belgium \u2014 the first EU country to ban them. From January 1, it will be forbidden to sell single-use vapes in Belgium, a bid to protect young people\u2019s health as part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4262,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4260\/revisions\/4262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}